Raj Ahten felt a strange terror beginning to well up inside him. A great king marched at the head of that army, he felt sure. The wizard’s king. The king his pyromancer had warned him of.

And he brought an army Raj Ahten could not match.

Even as he watched, a marvelous thing happened: at that very moment, the great cloud of dust over the army began to form—tall spires of dust rose hundreds of yards into the air like the points of a crown, and a face took form in the roiling dust, a stern visage of a cruel man with death in his eyes.

The Earth King.

I came here to hunt him, and now he hunts me, Raj Ahten realized.

Raj Ahten had little time remaining. He needed to return to the castle, take it quickly, win back his forcibles before he retreated.

He raced down the stairs of Tor Loman, heart pounding in terror.

48

FIRE

Raj Ahten raced back down the forest trail, leaping rocks, speeding through glens. He suspected now that Longmot held no treasure, that the forcibles had moved.

Everything pointed to it—Orden practically begging for execution. The man was obviously joined in a serpent. To kill him would behead the serpent, freeing another soldier to fight with almost as much metabolism as Orden now carried.

But leaving Orden alive and incapacitated kept the serpent intact. Raj Ahten had only to find warriors dedicated to the serpent, slaughter them quickly, and cut the serpent into pieces.

The existence of a serpent seemed evidence that the forcibles had left Longmot, for if Orden had really taken hundreds of endowments, he’d not have relied on a serpent for power. He’d have garnered greater stamina. But the man was too easily wounded, too slow to heal.

No, he couldn’t have taken hundreds of endowments, or even dozens. He didn’t have the people here to serve as Dedicates. So he’d moved the forcibles. Probably not far. People who hide valuables seldom want to hide them far. They want to be able check on them frequently.

Yet it was possible Orden had given them to another.

All morning, Raj Ahten had hesitated to attack the castle for some reason he could not name. Something about the soldiers on the walls had disturbed him. Now he realized what it was: Prince Orden wasn’t on those walls. He’d expected father and son to fight together, as in the old songs.

But the son was not here.

The new King of the Earth is coming, the old wizard had told him. But the wizard had not emphasized the word new. “I see hope for House Orden,” the wizard had said.